Nowhere to hide: global corporates, when sued, used to walk away. Not for much longer.In a trend long overdue, lawyers and their clients are challenging multinational corporations
All across Latin America Latin America, the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. , class-action environmental lawsuits are being filed against corporations such as Chiquita Brands International, Occidental Chemical and Del Monte Fresh Produce. In January, a Nicaraguan court ordered Shell, Dole and Dow Chemical to pay more than US$489 million to 450 workers exposed to a pesticide the workers claimed left them impotent. But the most notable case of recent times is that of oil behemoth behemoth (bē`hĭmŏth, bĭhē`–) [Heb.,=plural of beast], large, fanciful primeval monster, like Leviathan, evoking the hippopotamus mentioned in the Book of Job. ChevronTexaco, which plaintiffs say left Ecuador with an enormous toxic dump of spilled crude oil--18 million gallons, almost twice the size of the Exxon Valdez This article is about the tank vessel Exxon Valdez. For the spill, see Exxon Valdez oil spill. Exxon Valdez was the original name (later Sea River Mediterranean and eventually Mediterranean spill. A three-judge panel in the remote Ecuadoran Amazon town of Lago Agrio is considering claims by 30,000 inhabitants
The game is based loosely on the concepts from SameGame. of the jungles of Ecuador and Peru that the oil company contaminated contaminated, v 1. made radioactive by the addition of small quantities of radioactive material. 2. made contaminated by adding infective or radiographic materials. 3. an infective surface or object. their rainforest and exposed them to cancer-causing pollutants. The plaintiffs want more than $1.5 billion. The suit is remarkable not only for its endurance--it survived 10 years of legal wrangling over venue alone--but because a landmark decision by a New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of federal court last year stipulated that any financial penalty imposed on ChevronTexaco in Ecuador he recognized in the United States. "It's a major shock for corporations that, for the first time, an environmental case is transferred to a foreign country where a judgment is enforceable in the United States," says Joseph Kohn, one of the plaintiffs' U.S. attorneys. The plaintiffs, mostly members of indigenous Amazon tribes, originally wanted the case tried in White Plains, New York For other places with the same name, see White Plains (disambiguation). White Plains is a city in south-central Westchester County, New York, about 4 miles (6 km) east of the Hudson River and , the site of Texaco's headquarters (Chevron merged with Texaco in 2001). It was there, they alleged, that Texaco officials made the decision to save billions of dollars by dumping contaminated water befouled be·foul tr.v. be·fouled, be·foul·ing, be·fouls 1. To make dirty; soil. See Synonyms at contaminate. 2. To cast aspersions upon; speak badly of. Adj. 1. by the drilling operation into estuaries, rivers and 350 man-made waste pits, rather than injecting the toxic waste toxic waste is waste material, often in chemical form, that can cause death or injury to living creatures. It usually is the product of industry or commerce, but comes also from residential use, agriculture, the military, medical facilities, radioactive sources, and back into the earth, as has been the oil industry's standard practice. Chevron inherited the lawsuit after the merger. ChevronTexaco spokesman Chris Gidez says the company broke no laws in Ecuador and that the government from 1995 to 1998 monitored ChevronTexaco's $40 million cleanup operations there. Gidez also says there is no evidence to support the plaintiffs' claims that Texaco's operations caused cancer in Amazon residents. But here's the twist: Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the U.S. version of the lawsuit, saying that the plaintiffs live in Ecuador and Peru and sustained their alleged injuries there--a legal parry known as "inconvenient forum." In theory, the people affected are unlikely to appear in a distant U.S. Court to testify. In this case and others, the defendants often use this argument to drive cases back to their home countries, deftly avoiding liability in more efficient, less lenient U.S. courts. See you in court. "Large corporations want these cases kicked back to developing nations like Ecuador, where they have an advantage," says Alejandro Garro, professor of comparative and Latin American law at Columbia University in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . "In Ecuador, there is no power of discovery, which means ChevronTexaco doesn't have to turn over any document that it doesn't want to." Now, of course, that strategy is moot. If the Amazon judges rule against ChevronTexaco, the penalty will stand in the United States. To be sure, the Amazon judges are in a bind. On one hand, the case is a hot political issue. Populist Ecuadoran President Lucio Gutierrez co-governs with an indigenous political party. On the other hand, oil accounts for 50% of the nation's economy. An adverse ruling for ChevronTexaco might curb future oil investments. If the judges find the evidence compelling, I would hope they would have the courage to hold ChevronTexaco accountable and send a strong message to U.S. multinational corporations: If you damage our environment, we will see you in court. The era of global markets demands global justice. COMMENTS? WRITE: siliconjack@latintrade-inc.com |
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